Sudden Death fk-7

by William X. Kienzle

  “But the thing you gotta remember about the Hun is that he was the only person he cared about. If you were in his way, he’d try his damndest to run you over. ’Bout the only guys who got on with him were the ones he impressed. Some were impressed with his money. Some were impressed with his reputation. He was almost a legend. He holds-or held-nearly all the league records for a tight end. And he played the position longer’n anyone else ever. He was an established hero to some of these kids when they were growin’ up.

  “But you were either impressed with him or you didn’t care much for him. He wasn’t easy to like. . too much for himself and almost nothin’ for the team. That’s the way the Hun was.”

  “And you?”

  “I taped him, patched up his bruises. Outside of that, as far as he was concerned, kept pretty much to myself. Only way to get through life.”

  “Okay,” said Harris, rising from the chair, “I think that’ll be all for now. We’ll probably have more questions. So stay available.”

  Brown nodded.

  The three men left the locker room and began the steep incline toward the parking lot outside the stadium. The vast lot, nearly empty, was dotted by only a few cars. One could see the significant potholes, cracks in the asphalt, and areas of just bare ground. Koesler mused that it must be some sort of moral crime to charge-and extravagantly-to park there.

  They entered the city-owned car. “Do you mind, Father,” Ewing asked, “going with us on one more call?”

  “No, of course not.” Koesler was surprised. He had been asked to participate in this interrogation segment of the investigation only because of his particular association with the God Squad discussion group. And the questioning of those members was now completed.

  “Actually, we’ve got two more calls-Mrs. Galloway and Hunsinger’s mother-to make before we go back to headquarters and get together with the others investigating this case. Delivering you to your parish is right on the way to Mrs. Hunsinger’s.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, why Mrs. Galloway and Mrs. Hunsinger?”

  “They had keys-and thus access-to Hunsinger’s apartment. We have to check them out.”

  Koesler could understand why Hunsinger’s mother might have a key to his apartment, but did Mrs. Galloway still have a key?

  “All we know is what we hear on the gossip circuit. She and Hunsinger had an affair awhile back. He gave her a key. We have no idea whether she returned it or might have had a copy made. We’ve got to check it out. . touch all bases, you know.”

  Interesting, thought Koesler.

  Sergeant Ewing would have no way of knowing how far from actuality he was when referring to Koesler and a gossip circuit in the same sentence. The priest neither collected nor spread rumor. And thought himself the better for it.

  She could remember drowning. Even though she was only six at the time, the memory had never left her. Not that she constantly thought about the event. But it certainly had changed and formed her life.

  It had happened when she, an only child, accompanied her father aboard his sailboat on Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. The wind was up and the lake’s surface disturbed. Marjorie Palmer and her father were alone on board. He had strapped her in a lifejacket. . too tightly, she decided. She loosened it.

  Her father had just begun a tack when an unexpected wave slapped the boat. Marjorie lost her balance. As she tumbled out, her head struck the side of the boat. She struggled only momentarily before going limp. Her body slipped out of the loosened lifejacket. And down she went.

  It took her father several minutes to locate her in the roiled water. When he did, he grabbed her and shot to the surface. Afterward, he was unable to recall how he had managed to get her and himself back aboard. He hadn’t thought to lower the rope ladder before diving off the boat. He had thought only of rescuing his daughter or dying in the attempt. Without the ladder, it was pretty improbable that he would be able to get back in the boat, much less get his daughter’s limp body back in. Everyone attributed his feat simply to the phenomenon that in extreme emergencies, people are capable of almost superhuman strength.

  Once back in the boat, he had administered artificial respiration until Marjie began to breathe again. But she was still unconscious. Fortunately, the occupants of a nearby powerboat witnessed what had happened. They sped Mr. Palmer and his unconscious daughter to shore, where an ambulance sped her to Hennepin County General Hospital.

  It was in the emergency room that the bump on her head, just over the right ear, was discovered. The doctor performed a lumbar puncture, hoping to find the spinal fluid to be clear. It was streaked with red.

  The medical staff did what it could. They fitted her with catheters and IVs. Nurses came in periodically to turn the small patient to prevent bedsores. They administered physical therapy, moving her small arms and legs so the joints would not stiffen. But no one could predict whether she would ever feed herself or move her own body again.

  Hours became days. Days melted into weeks. Marjie remained unconscious. Her classmates, her playmates-indeed, because of media coverage, most Twin Citians-prayed for her. One or the other of her parents was with her constantly.

  One day, some three and a half weeks after the accident, Marjie’s eyes fluttered, then opened. Her father, seated at her bedside, had been staring at his daughter’s closed eyes for so long that at first he did not believe his own. Then, of course, emotion overcame him.

  The Twin Cities celebrated. A lot of prayer and concern had been invested in that little girl. And it had paid off. The Sunday following her recovery, sermons were preached on the theme of Jesus curing the sick, especially children. Little Marjorie Palmer was a celebrity.

  Her recollection of her coma was published in area newspapers and discussed in radio and television newscasts. It was not that much. She remembered striking her head as she fell. She remembered slipping under water. She remembered trying to breathe and swallowing water. She remembered being terribly frightened.

  Then, there had been a brilliant light. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she was certain she had seen Jesus. He was waiting for her, smiling, arms outstretched. Gone was her fear. She felt very comfortable. Then, it was as if she had drifted into a deep, peaceful sleep, remembering nothing more until she awoke and saw her father crying tears of joy.

  That had been almost ten years before Elisabeth Kubler-Ross made afterlife experiences popular. Little Marjorie’s experience made her even more of a celebrity.

  From that time on, Marjorie Palmer held the firm belief that God had a very special purpose for her. That was why He had returned her to this world. She would have died after but six years on earth if God, perhaps as a result of all those prayers, had not restored her to life. Her parents, firmly believing this to be so, impressed the message on their daughter so repeatedly and forcibly that she had little alternative but to believe.

  It was not simple growing up knowing she was divinely destined for some unknown but obviously earthshaking purpose. On top of all this, Marjorie was a bright girl, who learned easily and won top grades. She was also a beautiful brunette with a spectacular complexion. Little wonder she became the most popular coed at the University of Minnesota.

  Looking back now, at her life from the time of her “drowning,” through her college days, she could find no reason why she had let Jay Galloway into that life. In the jigsaw puzzle of her existence, he was the piece that didn’t fit. When she forced him in regardless, he destroyed everything.

  Though they had attended the university at roughly the same time, she didn’t recall him there. She had traveled with a crowd several levels above Jay Galloway’s expectations at that time.

  Then had come the massive frontal assault he called courting. She had to admit that, at least through the courting stage, he was fun. Even the sex was good. Better than anything she had experienced until then. Better, in fact, than anything since, including Jay Galloway.

  It started on their honeymoon. In the Hot
el Liliuokalani, he began to treat her like a whore. She almost expected him to pay her after they copulated. She could not understand it. . nor would he discuss it.

  As life with Jay Galloway continued, Marjorie slid subconsciously into her role as, not his wife, but a high-priced mistress.

  How far she had fallen! From a privileged soul who had had an encounter not merely with death but also with God. She’d been programmed to believe that hers was a divine mission. God had saved her for something significant.

  To be the debased consort of Jay Galloway?

  It was when he sank everything they owned into that miserable tabloid, when they had been reduced to eating stretched-out leftovers and borrowing money-from her parents, his parents, everyone-she was pushed around the bend. She seemed to descend, in her husband’s eyes and her own, from being a high-priced mistress to a two-bit whore. She abandoned the last shreds of self-respect and acquired a well-deserved reputation for sleeping around.

  As their financial condition improved with the success of the paper, followed by another success in the pizza business, culminating in this present adventure with the Cougars, she simply became more selective about her sleeping partners, whether of one night or of some duration. It seemed her only way of striking back at the man who had dragged her from the heights to the eighth circle of hell. Her condition might be best described by the ancient adage Corruptio optimi pessima, (“When the best is corrupted, it becomes the worst”). And she owed it all to her husband.

  She had planned Hank Hunsinger as the coup de grace to her relationship with Jay. She had long thought that her husband and the Hun deserved each other. They used each other shamelessly. Galloway urging Hunsinger to play even when badly injured, reminding him that one doesn’t make the club from the tub, and that a good part of the crowd had come to see him. And that any loss of playing time would certainly be reflected in the cash value of his next contract.

  Hunsinger, for his part, gleefully wrung every last cent he could get out of Galloway’s wallet each time a new contract was negotiated. It was no longer that the Hun needed the money; he just enjoyed the torture he could inflict on the penurious Galloway.

  Marjorie’s strategy, then, was not only to have an affair with Hunsinger, but also to make sure her husband knew of it. Knew that the two people he despised, one for marrying him, the other for working for him, were mocking him through the gossip columns. Knew that the money, expensive gifts, and investments she would insist Hunsinger lavish on her all had their source in Galloway’s carefully doled-out fortune. In effect, she would force her husband to support her twice over.

  Her plan worked, at least to the extent that the affair did mark the end to any conjugal relationship. Until recently, the Galloways had continued to live together and be seen together, but there was no longer any intimacy between them. A divorce was in their immediate future.

  However, Marjorie had very badly gauged how much an affair with Hunsinger would drain from her already depleted emotional reservoir. Even life with Galloway had not prepared her for the degree of humiliation Hunsinger was capable of inflicting.

  Long after she felt that she had achieved the revenge she had plotted against her husband, Hunsinger would not permit their affair to end. He demanded that she beg for the shame he heaped upon her. When he was finished with her-and only then-he casually dismissed her.

  She could not forget and would not forgive.

  Marjorie attended the Cougar games faithfully. It was one of the few agreements she and Galloway had reached. Besides, she derived deep satisfaction from the physical punishment Hunsinger had to absorb in those games.

  But it wasn’t enough. It never could be sufficient reparation for the brutality he had wreaked against her. There had to be something more. As time passed, the memory of her ill-fated fling with Hunsinger, instead of fading, became more intense and piercing. With increasing frequency, she found herself indulging in elaborate plans of revenge.

  As her ace of trump, there was always that duplicate key to his apartment.

  Lieutenant Harris needed more time and many more words to explain to Marjorie Galloway what Father Koesler was doing in her home. She was the only one of this morning’s interviewees who had not known him through the God Squad, or through any other circumstance, for that matter.

  During the explanation, Koesler experienced one of those awkward sensations that was by no means unique in his life. He felt like an appliance being described by a salesman. After a demonstration, should the housewife decide against him, he would be put out on the porch and discarded. He stood, hat in hands, while he was being spoken of in the third person, offering it up for the suffering souls in purgatory.

  At length, Koesler was accepted into the Galloway home, as accepted he must be. Marjorie Galloway led them to the living room, airy and spacious, but, Koesler thought, not particularly well decorated. He felt that something was wrong with the decor, but he couldn’t identify what. He smiled inwardly; what did he know about decor? There were times when he was inordinately grateful he ordinarily wore basic black and white. If he were a businessman, it would be all browns, blues, grays, or greens. He would never try a contrasting color combination; the chances that the colors would complement one another were no better than fifty-fifty.

  The priest listened attentively as Lieutenant Harris and Sergeant Ewing covered the now familiar territory of their preceding interrogations.

  Yes, she certainly knew Hunsinger was compulsive and that he regularly showered at home after a game. The question was answered with a slight shudder. As if the memory of Hunsinger’s postgame shower was somehow disturbing. She claimed not to know there was any strychnine kept in the apartment. That would jibe with the fact that they had broken up approximately a year before; Kit Hoffer had stated that Hunsinger had gotten the strychnine during the preseason games, which would have been about three months ago. Her professed lack of knowledge hinged, of course, on her not having returned to the apartment since her affair with Hunsinger ended.

  Yes, she knew about the contact lenses and the nearsighted astigmatism. But painstaking questioning by the officers failed to elicit any evidence that she knew anything further was amiss with his vision.

  Koesler tended to believe people. Probably it had something to do with his training. Many years before, in the seminary, he had been taught that a priest hearing confessions is obliged to presume that the penitent is telling the truth, whether speaking for or against him- or herself. He had followed that principle throughout his many years of hearing confessions. And the presumption spilled over into his general attitude toward people.

  But Mrs. Galloway’s seeming ignorance of Hunsinger’s color dysfunction stretched Koesler’s credulity almost to the breaking point. How well could a person disguise a problem like colorblindness? Sufficiently for a spouse or a paramour to be ignorant of it? Maybe. But the priest had his doubts. And, he thought, if he doubted, what must be the state of mind of the detectives, who, after having been lied to regularly over the years, are programmed to distrust at first blush rather than to believe?

  Koesler also noted that Mrs. Galloway was fielding these questions rather smoothly, as if she knew what was coming next. The only thing so far that had seemed to surprise her had been his presence.

  And, indeed, she had been forewarned. Jay Galloway had phoned her immediately after his interrogation. He wanted no discrepancies in their responses to the detectives’ questions. Since he had been informed that Koesler’s presence stemmed from his having been a member of the God Squad, and since Marj was not a member, it did not enter Galloway’s head that Koesler would be present at Marj’s interrogation. So he had not mentioned the priest. Thus her surprise.

  “One thing more, ma’am,” said Ewing, “could you tell us what you did yesterday? Try to be as thorough as possible.”

  Marjorie Galloway sighed. “I must have awakened at about nine. Had breakfast, read the papers … a rather leisurely morning, all in all. Went to
the game. After the game, went to dinner with some friends. Then returned here. Watched some TV. Went to bed.

  “Now you’re going to ask me if anyone can corroborate all this, right?”

  Good-naturedly, Ewing nodded.

  “Right!” She smiled. “You see, I’ve watched ‘Hill Street Blues’ too.”

  Ewing smiled in return.

  “Well,” Marjorie proceeded, “the answer is yes and no. I sat in my husband’s box for the game. So lots of reliable people can account for me there. I had dinner with the van den Muysenbergs-he’s the Dutch consul. That was immediately after the game until nearly nine. And, from what I read in the papers about the Hun’s death, that should pretty well take care of my afternoon and evening alibis.

  “However, I’m at a loss for a morning alibi.”

  Ewing looked up from his notepad; Harris raised both eyebrows.

  “I live alone now. Have for the past month. Actually, for all practical purposes, for the past year. There is,” she nodded in Father Koesler’s direction, “something to be said for celibacy. I have assembled an unenviable track record of living with people. Now I’m trying life alone, and enjoying it. At least I have more peace alone than I’ve ever experienced with anyone else.

  “Gentlemen,” she looked from Harris to Ewing, neglecting Koesler, “I admit what you already know: that Hank Hunsinger and I were. . an item … for a long while a year or so ago. It was a sordid affair well chronicled in the gossip columns. But you can’t think for a minute I killed him! Why would I?”

  Ewing shrugged. “Revenge?”

  Marjorie smiled sardonically. “‘Hell hath no fury. .’? Trite! And it’s been more than a year! If I’d ever thought of it at all, why would I wait till now?”

  “An idea whose time had come?” Ewing suggested. “Look, ma’am, nobody is accusing you of anything.”

  “Then why are you asking me all these questions. . as if I were a suspect?”

  “We’re asking questions of lots of people, ma’am,” Ewing responded. “Just trying to get the general information we need to home in on the perpetrator.”